Eva Zeisel was a ceramic artist and designer known for her tableware. Few who admired her often-abstract designs knew that she had been imprisoned as a young woman in the Soviet Union and later forced to flee Nazi-occupied Austria. She was 105. Full obituary

Eva Zeisel was a ceramic artist and designer known for her tableware. Few who admired her often-abstract designs knew that she had been imprisoned as a young woman in the Soviet Union and later forced to flee Nazi-occupied Austria. She was 105. Full obituary (Talisman Brolin / Chronicle Books)

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, the mercurial strongman who styled himself as a "Dear Leader" while ruling over an impoverished police state, defied and baffled the world with his nuclear aims and bizarre actions. He was 69. Full obituary

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, the mercurial strongman who styled himself as a "Dear Leader" while ruling over an impoverished police state, defied and baffled the world with his nuclear aims and bizarre actions. He was 69. Full obituary (Dmitry Astakhov / Itar-Tass / Abaca Press / MCT)

A former dissident playwright, Havel was the revered first president of Czechoslovakia after it overthrew Communist rule in 1989. His slogan: "May truth and love triumph over lies and hatred." He was 75. Full obituary

A former dissident playwright, Havel was the revered first president of Czechoslovakia after it overthrew Communist rule in 1989. His slogan: "May truth and love triumph over lies and hatred." He was 75. Full obituary (Petr David Josek / Associated Press)

The British American's polemical writings on religion, politics, war and other hot-button topics established him as a leading public intellectual. His openness about having cancer elicited thousands of letters and emails to Vanity Fair, where he was a longtime contributor. He was 62. Full...

The British American's polemical writings on religion, politics, war and other hot-button topics established him as a leading public intellectual. His openness about having cancer elicited thousands of letters and emails to Vanity Fair, where he was a longtime contributor. He was 62. Full... (Christian Witkin / TwelveBooks)

Harold Garfinkel, 93, a longtime UCLA sociology professor whose groundbreaking work examined the importance of common sense in everyday situations, died April 21 of congestive heart failure at his home in Pacific Palisades, said his wife Arlene.

"He was one of the major sociologists of the 20th century," said UCLA sociology professor John Heritage, who wrote a book about Garfinkel. "His main contribution was to essentially undermine and reverse a number of assumptions sociologists made of the world."

Sociologists had believed that social contacts such as conversations were too random and disorderly to be studied and explained. "Garfinkel said we live our lives in detail with everyday interactions," Heritage said. Garfinkel's theories became a subdiscipline of sociology known as ethnomethodology.

Garfinkel, who joined the UCLA faculty in 1954, used "very original but bizarre-sounding procedures" to show the "tremendous body of common-sense knowledge we use," Heritage explained.

In one example, Garfinkel's students went to a grocery store and bargained for lower prices. They showed the importance of common-sense assumptions people used every day to make society work "by undermining them," Heritage said.

Garfinkel's 1967 book "Studies in Ethnomethodology" was "one of the 10 or so most significant books published in sociology in the last 100 years," Heritage said.

Garfinkel was born Oct. 29, 1917, in Newark, N.J. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in economics in 1939 from what is now Rutgers University. He received a master's in sociology from the University of North Carolina in 1942, then served in the Army Air Forces until 1946 before earning a doctorate in sociology from Harvard in 1952.

Garfinkel became an professor emeritus in the late 1980s.

Gerald Allison

Architect designed luxury hotels

Gerald Allison, 78, an architect who designed luxury resort hotels throughout the world, died April 22 of gastric melanoma at his home in Newport Beach, his family said.

A principal partner in the Irvine-based firm Wimberly Allison Tong & Goo, Allison's many designs included the Palace of the Lost City in South Africa, the Palace of the Golden Horses in Malaysia, the Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel in Dana Point, the Mansion at MGM Grand and the Venetian in Las Vegas, and Disney properties in Florida, Paris and Hong Kong.

The Lost City resort, which opened in 1992, "looks exactly like the ruins of an empire centuries old, except for a few features of modernity — like a casino and golf course," The Times reported in 1999.

Gerald Lou Allison was born Oct. 27, 1932, in Seattle, the second of three children of C. Jay and Ruth Allison. He graduated from the University of Washington's school of architecture with a bachelor's degree in 1955, the same year he married Charlotte Nelson. The couple moved to Hawaii in 1957 and he joined a firm that is now WATG. Allison also served in the Navy reserve in Hawaii.

"Man, he's a genius, are you kidding?" music producer Quincy Jones told The Times in 1999. Allison designed a home for Jones, a high school classmate in Seattle. "Out of the 100 hotels I love in the world, Jerry's done 84."

Allison opened the firm's California office in 1982 when his two daughters enrolled at USC. The company's first prominent U.S. project was the Ritz-Carlton in south Orange County. Allison became a partner in 1962 and retired in 2007 as president international.

Tom King

Guitarist co-founded the Outsiders

Tom King, 68, a guitarist and founding member of the Outsiders who co-wrote the Cleveland rock 'n' roll band's biggest hit, "Time Won't Let Me," died April 23, his family announced. The Cleveland Plain Dealer newspaper reported that King died at a nursing home in Wickliffe, Ohio, after a period of declining health.

A Cleveland native, King formed Tom King and the Starfires with singer Sonny Geraci in the late 1950s. The duo expanded to a quintet and renamed themselves the Outsiders in 1965. The next year, King wrote "Time Won't Let Me" with his brother-in-law Chet Kelley, and the song spent 15 weeks on the Billboard charts, peaking at No. 5.

The band also had hits with "Girl in Love," "Respectable" and "Help Me, Girl" but disbanded before the end of the 1960s.

Ronald D. Asmus, 53, a former U.S. diplomat who took charge of the Brussels office of the German Marshall Fund of the United States in 2005, died Saturday at a hospital in Brussels. He had cancer.

As U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for European affairs from 1997 to 2000 during the Clinton administration, Asmus was part of talks that saw formerly communist East European nations join the NATO alliance. He wrote a book about that — "Opening NATO's Door" — in 2002.

In 2010 he published "A Little War That Shook the World," about the 2008 war between Russia and Georgia.

Before leading the Brussels office of the German Marshall Fund, a think tank that promotes greater cooperation between North America and Europe, Asmus had spent three years as senior transatlantic fellow at the fund's Washington office. He had previously been an analyst at the Rand Corp. think tank in Santa Monica.

A native of Milwaukee, he held degrees in Soviet and European studies.

Christian Ferry, former president of Les Films Marianne, Paramount Pictures' French motion picture production subsidiary, whose film credits include serving as executive producer of the 1976 film "King Kong," died April 21 of cancer at his home in Paris, his family said. He was 80.